Featured Articles
| Monday Feb 27, 2017 | |
| When I first started in the energy business, I did not know the terminology as I was a high math teacher who went into the business world as an IT support/help desk staffer. Once I worked my way up through the ranks as an analyst for the cash desk, my head was spinning as I had more questions than answers. I remember one of the questions I asked the term trader one day, "what is the different between the heavy load and light load numbers?" I thought it was a fare question at the time, but he just looked at me and started laughing with the ... » read more | |
| Friday Feb 24, 2017 | |
| Dipnet fishing at Celilo Falls in the 1950’s, just upstream of The Dalles Dam. 2,320 Miles: Length of the Mississippi1450 Miles: Length of Colorado River744 Miles: Length of the St Lawrence River1243 Miles: Length of Columbia River 593 kcfs: Average flow of Mississippi22.5 kcfs: Average flow of Colorado River590 kcfs: Average flow of St Lawrence River265 kcfs: Average flow of Columbia River Largest Dams in the United States:6,809 MW: Grand Coulee Dam (Columbia)2,620 MW: Chief Joseph Dam (Columbia)2,515 MW: Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant (Niagara)2,160 MW ... » read more | |
| Thursday Feb 23, 2017 | |
| Yesterday’s newsletter discussed the announced closure of the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona. Today we discuss a report that advocates for the closure of the Columbia Generating Station nuclear facility located near Richland, Washington. With the Navajo plant, the project owners are opting to close it down, while the Columbia Generating Station owners want to keep operating it and a group that I was not heretofore familiar with – Physicians for Social Responsibility – would like to close it down. Let’s start with a little background ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Feb 22, 2017 | |
| Figure 1 | Navajo Power Plant In the last week we’ve seen news articles related to two major power generating stations in the west come across our screens. One relates to the Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear power facility on the Columbia River. The other relates to the Navajo Generating Station, a coal power facility located near Lake Powell in Page, Arizona. Both of these power plants are under economic pressure because the forward-looking costs to operate them exceed expected market prices. A combination of factors are expected to continue to put ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Feb 21, 2017 | |
| Those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest try to find every excuse around this time of year to head down to the Southern part of California for a little sunshine and warmer weather. That is not the case this year as California continues to get hit with massive storms across the entire state. For example, a friend of mine was flying to Los Angeles for the long weekend to spend some time with friends in and around Long Beach. I got a text from him on Friday night stating his flight was delayed by 3:30 out of Portland due to the heavy showers ... » read more | |
| Friday Feb 17, 2017 | |
| I have always been intrigued by the phrase “Smart Grid.” It is one of those buzz phrases that people use that could mean almost anything. Simply Googling the phrase brings up a number of definitions. Here are two: “an electricity supply network that uses digital communications technology to detect and react to local changes in usage.” or “Smart grid generally refers to a class of technology people are using to bring utility electricity delivery systems into the 21st century, using computer-based remote control and automation.” No ... » read more | |
| Thursday Feb 16, 2017 | |
| With the flows shifting up over the weekend and into the early part of this week, we started to see some lack of market/lack of turbine capacity spill at several of the dams along the Lower Columbia and Snake River basins. All four of the dams on the Lower Columbia showed spill for the purposes of lack of turbine capacity. Figure 1 | Lower Columbia Flows and Spill - Hourly This was confirmed on yesterday's TMT call at the very end of the meeting. The spill was not due to lack of market as the price in the market was still attractive to a ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Feb 15, 2017 | |
| Brayton Point Power Station is the largest coal plant in New England and consists of three units combing for 1,200 MWs of coal generation plus a 4th, 475 MW, oil fired unit. In late 2013 the facility owners announced that the coal unit would be retired in early 2017 which meant the end of coal generation in Massachusetts. The planned retirement has remained on schedule and is currently expected to shut its doors sometime this March. As many of our readers are aware, New England sees some of the highest energy costs in the winter thanks to low natural gas ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Feb 14, 2017 | |
| This morning, almost every written publication across the country has some coverage of the Oroville spillway issues. To recap, the flooding and spillway damage would never occurred if California hadn't received a large amount of precipitation. Since October 1, almost all of the climate stations across Northern California are posting readings that are well above normal. After seeing so many years of drought, it has been a welcome sight to have full reservoirs. The problem is that the Department of Water Resources didn't keep outflows from the Oroville Dam ... » read more | |
| Monday Feb 13, 2017 | |
| The weather forecasts from various vendors have been showing quite of bit of red in the 8-14 day period and/or the 6-10/11-15 day periods across most of the Lower 48. Figure 1 | NOAA 8-14 Day Temperature Forecast Since it is only the middle of February, the warmer temperatures have shifted the overall rescom demand quite a bit lower in several regions east of the Mississippi and Texas. In the West, temperatures continue to be slightly below normal but with the highest renewable energy penetration (due to California's RPS) the net thermal demand from power ... » read more | |
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